January 19, 2018 - VOX CEPR's Policy Portal published an editorial by SEP president Stefano Micossi and his colleagues Colin Mayer, Marco Onado, Marco Pagano and Andrea Polo. This column draws on a new book that presents the results of a two-year research program that brought together leading economists from around the world in order to examine whether finance and public policy contributed to the deep and prolonged decline in European investment after the financial crisis. The findings discussed in this article point consistently to debt overhang as playing a contributory factor in exacerbating problems in both tax and regulatory policy.